I happened upon this book while shelf-reading in the Crafts section of the library (always dangerous). While I resisted the first time around, when my dear friend A. said she was looking for help making fairy dolls, I tracked it down again.
Felt Wee Folk by Salley Mavor. Salley Mavor seems to have made her living off of making little tiny dolls. She’s illustrated several books with dolls and appliqued and embroidered backgrounds. It appears that you can sometimes buy them on her website, if you are in time to snatch them up. But if you want them without the chance or the expense, she’s thoughtfully produced this book that tells you how to make them yourself. They are based on chenille stems, wooden beads, felt, and a little roving. I should not forget the little acorn-cap hats. Anyway, after covering materials, Mavor has simplified versions of the basic dolls for kids to make themselves, with step-by-step instructions for both flower fairies and boy dolls. Then, she goes into the process for adults to make dolls, which includes painting faces on wooden beads and making an armature. These dolls look both sturdier and, since the chenille stems are first completely wrapped in embroidery floss, then bent double and wrapped up all over again, considerably more time-consuming. There are instructions for wee folk from babies through adults, with the babies having one and a half inch tall armatures and the adults being four and a half inches tall. With the basics out of the way, she goes on to specialized groups of dolls – flower fairies, castle inhabitants (royalty with gold-painted acorn caps), harvest folk, and beach residents (including a pirate). You can photocopy the patterns to cut out their little felt clothes, which are also marked for where to embroider them. She also gives advice on selecting the best artificial flowers to take apart and use for fairy skirts and wings. If I didn’t know for sure that two years old is both too young to give me the time to make these and too young to play with them without ripping them apart, I would be making all of them right now. Following all of the doll instructions are some felt appliquéd and embroidered pins, coin purses, backgrounds, and suchlike. They are also charming, and made me want to believe that I could do folksy, free-form embroidery and have it come out as beautifully as Mavor’s does. But the little dolls are what are begging to be made the most.
If you love her work, but more for looking at than wanting to recreate, here are some of her other titles:
Come to My Party by Judith Bennet Richardson
In the Heart by Ann Turner
You and Me: Poems of Friendship
Jack and Jill
Wee Willie Winkie
Pocketful of Posies
Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .
Early-Start Potty Training 
Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George In this retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, young Galen grew up in the army, his father a soldier and his mother a laundress. Now, his parents dead and the war between Westfalin and Andalusia over, the only hint he has is the name of his mother’s sister in the capital city. On the way there, he meets a mysterious old woman who gives him a cloak of invisibility and, when she sees him knitting, special balls of wool, one black, one white. He thinks she’s a little touched, but he takes them to humor her. Once in town, he discovers that his mother’s sister lives in one of the nicest houses in the nicest neighborhood in town. Her husband is the official gardener of the Queen’s Gardens, and Galen, despite his lack of experience, is taken on as an under-gardener. There, he inadvertently startles Princess Rose, the eldest of the twelve flower-named princesses, who falls into the fountain she was gazing at. The resultant illness ends up infecting all of her sisters and, since they can never take a night off from their dancing, lasts for months and becomes quite serious. Nevertheless, Rose and Galen are taken with each other. In typical romance style, the story alternates viewpoints between Galen and Rose. From Rose, we learn that they have inherited this curse from an ill-considered bargain their now-deceased mother made with the King Under Stone. Not only are the princesses being worn out with dancing, but they are being groomed as brides for the twelve sons of the King Under Stone. And they are incapable of telling anyone anything about what is happening to them. Things go from bad to worse when their desperate father declares that any prince who can solve the mystery can marry a princess of his choosing. The princesses are humiliated, but even worse, the failed princes all end up dead soon afterwards, with their grieving countries suspecting witchcraft. Even though he knows he can’t expect the promised reward for himself, Galen goes against his uncle’s wishes to try to help the princesses. Though I felt that his solution was maybe a little simplistic and some of his research was left out, it worked quite well overall. The characters were nicely sketched, the country concrete, the villains suitably creepy, the pacing good, the language lovely. The romance is squeaky clean, just enough to make middle-grade girls sigh. And did I mention that Galen knits frequently? It’s a happy for me. All in all, a very satisfying fairy tale retelling. 
Ivy Loves to Give by Freya Blackwood. I brought this one home from the library just on the strength of the sweet cover illustration. It’s turned out to be a favorite at our house. Ivy, who appears to be about two, loves to give, even though her presents don’t always work. Illustrations show Ivy giving her gift – a slipper to a slug, glasses to the dog – with the actual owner of the previous page’s gift looking in puzzlement for their missing belonging. Will Ivy realize her mistakes? Will there be a present for Ivy, too? The words are economical, just four sentences for the whole story, but the pictures really carry the book. They are expressive pencil and watercolor drawings, with a perfect balance of detail and lots of white space. I’ll give a shout-out to Blackwood for a rare picture book portrayal of a nursing baby. We get a glimpse of everyone in Ivy’s family, including parents, big sister, baby brother, grandma, and multiple animals, and though there is no dialog, the affection is clear. Everything fits together just so in this book. My own toddler loves to hear it over and over again, and it’s beautiful enough for me to enjoy that, too. 
Going Bovine by 
The Princess Curse by 
The Knitter’s Home Companion by 
Rampant by 
Ninja Cowboy Bear Presents: the Way of the Ninja by David Bruins. Pictures by Hilary Leung. The ninja, the cowboy, and the bear are all friends. Usually they have a great time together, but “One day, the ninja’s ways came between him and his friends. This is what happened.” There is a moral, of course – the ninja wants to play with his friends, but only his way. When they don’t want to play his extremely active, often injury-inducing way, he goes off to play by himself. You can guess the message, of course, but the telling is delightful. The language is the perfect combination of concise yet formal, giving the simple story an epic feel. The art is brightly rounded and looks digitally created, each character with a distinctive style. When the text describes the characters talking, they’ll be shown with thought or speech bubbles filled with descriptive pictures rather than text. The ninja’s has kanji alongside the beautiful Japanese-style pictures in his thought bubbles. (Transliteration and translation are both supplied on the copyright page, for those who don’t read kanji.) In this book, the ninja’s detailed half-page picture descriptions of what he’d like to do with his friends contrast vividly with his friends’ tiny black and white ideas. Small bluebirds around the edges of the page give occasional one-picture commentary on the action. In the end – hooray! – the ninja finds a way to work the action and adventure he craves into the activities his friends want to do. The only caveat that I have to give for this book is that it is not for bedtime reading. I was alone with the kiddos the evening I brought this home from the library, and kept hearing loud thunks from downstairs while I was trying to put the toddler to sleep. It transpired that my son had been inspired by the book to try great ninja leaps across the living room. Otherwise, this book is perfection. 
The Rough Guide to English Folk. According to the back copy, English folk music has been experiencing resurgence. Hooray! This disc features a wide variety of modern English folk musicians, from instrumental to vocal and from traditional interpretations to folk-rock. I had only heard of one of the artists on this album, Kathryn Tickell, whom I was fortunate enough to see live in front of, I believe, a Maddy Prior concert years ago. This album was a hit with everyone listening to it. I loved the range of songs – the foot-tapping rhythms of Kathryn Tickell’s Northumbrian pipes, the dense male harmonies, the ballads based on fairy tales and wars current and remembered. I’m going to look into getting more from Emily Portman, whose “Tongue-Tied”, a haunting ballad retelling of the tale of the Wild Swans (but with ravens instead of swans) that went through my head for days. The six-year-old boy, forced to listen to music rather than our book (the thrilling Septimus Heap book 6 – Darke), liked it after all and said it reminded him of Pennsic. And the toddler is still asking for it, and was singing the tunes even after the car was turned off. 
